While channel surfing late last night I stumbled across the HBO documentary on Nick Buoniconti. I believe the footage was shot in 2019, and he'd passed away later that year.
I was stricken by his appearance during the interview. The CTE had severely taken its toll by the time of the filming. He had to pause at least a couple times when he forgot what he was going to say and couldn't finish a sentence. It was painful to watch. However he did recall a lot of things with great detail, such as his childhood in Springfield MA, his college days at Notre Dame (where he was captain), how he couldn't get drafted by the NFL but instead got drafted by the Boston Patriots when they were still an AFL team.
This guy went to Suffolk University Law School AFTER PRACTICE during the week and also during off seasons, and earned his law degree before getting traded to the Dolphins. Of course, he was defensive captain on our Super Bowl teams and was best pals with Dick Anderson (another very intelligent DB in those days). Anderson corroborated the story of Nick (in defense of Anderson when Shula was chewing him out) intervening and telling Coach Shula to go F himself. Shula respected Buoniconti so much that he didn't discipline him--he merely took him aside and said "Don't you ever tell me to go F myself again". Nick ended the story with: "and, I didn't!"
After the NFL, he was a practicing attorney where he represented NFL players in court matters and also was a sports agent, negotiating contracts for Andre Dawson ($6 years, $6 million unheard of back then). He then went on to be a highly successful executive (albeit at a tobacco company, something he regretted later).
The Documentary then moved on to the devastating injury to his son Marc, and this was also difficult to watch, for obvious reasons. It was amazing how he put the Miami Project together and how he did the fundraising for it--getting NFL alumni, broadcasters, corporations etc to donate.
I didnt' finish the program because it was very sad to me (and it was getting late), but I highly recommend this program (at least the first part of it)--especially if you never knew the story behind Buoniconti's life.